6 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



eyes count for much, but they alone will not make a man suc- 

 cessful. 



The strong young hunter is often the worst. Likely enough 

 he does the work for the work's sake, laughs at mountain-sides, 

 and, like a friend of our own, starts at dawn, travels all day, tells 

 us at night of peaks at fabulous distances on which he has 

 stood, but comes back empty-handed, simply because he is too 

 strong, too fast, and runs over ground leaving behind him, or 

 'jumping' out of range, game which a feebler man might have 

 seen when crawling slowly over the hillside or sitting down for 

 a frequent rest. One really good Western sportsman we know 

 advocates a very different system. ' Camp,' he says, ' near where 

 game is, look out for likely places, and then go and sit about 

 near them all day long. If the game comes to you, you'll pro- 

 bably get it ; if it don't you won't, and you wouldn't any way. 

 Somehows,' he generally adds, 'them bull clicks allusdid have 

 longer legs than mine, d n 'em.' 



Perhaps a knowledge of natural history is almost better than 

 either great physical powers or exceptional skill with the rifle. 

 If you watch a first-rate tennis-player, it will seem to you that 

 tennis is a very easy game. The second-rate player performs 

 prodigies of activity to get into the right place in time, but the 

 first-rate man never seems to be obliged to exert himself at all. 

 He always is where he ought to be. So it is with the good man 

 to hounds. His place at the fence is the easiest, and yet he 

 never seems to swerve or pick his place. In every case it is 

 the same. Knowledge of the game helps all the men in the 

 same way, and each in his own fashion picks his place ; but he 

 picks it long beforehand. The tennis-player knows where the 

 return must come, the hunting man sees the weak place by 

 which he means to go out at the very moment that he comes 

 in to a field, and in like manner the big game hunter gets to 

 where the big game is because he has calculated beforehand 

 where it ought to be, and experience and knowledge of the 

 beasts' habits, and a certain instinct which some men have, do 

 not mislead him. 



